On Wednesday, Secretary of State Marco Rubio published a post on X announcing that “the U.S. will begin revoking visas of Chinese students, including those with connections to the Chinese Communist Party or studying in critical fields.” Two days later, President Trump also took to social media, posting a rant on Truth Social accusing China of “VIOLATING ITS AGREEMENT WITH THE US” that had been brokered in Geneva earlier this month. Trump ended the post with an implication that more severe actions are on the way: “So much for being Mr. NICE GUY!” On Saturday, Axios reported that the aggressive stance take by American leaders towards the country’s largest trading partner was linked to one particular issue: China’s refusal to negotiate tariffs on rare-earth minerals and magnets.
The 17 different elements that are considered rare earths are perhaps inaccurately labeled, as they are relatively abundant and even found in the United States in large quantities. Over the past decade, China has staked out an increasingly dominant position in the global supply chain for these materials, which are crucial for electronic components across the board, from computers to telecommunications equipment, including a broad range of uses in America’s prized military technologies.
China’s edge in this sector comes from its outsize investment in extracting and processing these elements—a difficult, costly, and environmentally burdensome task for which global trading partners have increasingly turned to Beijing. According to the International Energy Agency, China controls 92% of global processed rare earths output. CNN reported in April that “unlike tariffs, it’s a front where Trump has little room to retaliate in kind.”
Even though Scott Bessent declared that “substantial progress” had been made through trade talks that he conducted with a Chinese delegation in Geneva, the 90-day trade-war truce that they brokered did not include any agreement to relax controls over these vital resources. The policy announced by Rubio on Wednesday is the result of a search for a bargaining chip powerful enough to bring China back to the table on this issue. “The president wasn’t happy,” a White House official briefed on Trump’s private talks with China told Axios. “He was looking for ideas, and Rubio had this idea of Chinese students.”
During the 2023-2024 academic year 277,398 Chinese students were attending American Universities, making up around 24.5% of the 1.13 million international students in the United States, according to the US State Department and the Institute of International Education. It remains unclear what criteria will be used for revoking the visas, but the lack of specificity in Rubio’s language (What qualifies as a “connection” to the Chinese Communist Party? What counts as a “critical field?”) is likely meant to afford the Trump administration broad latitude in execution.
Beijing has roundly condemned the policy, with Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Mao Ning declaring on Thursday that “this political and discriminatory practice of the US has exposed the lies of the so-called freedom and openness that the US has always advertised.”
